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Noted the quietness on my blog? Well, it’s about to stop as I can proudly present where I’ve been spending all my free hours on: my new book: Silverlight 5 Data and Services Cookbook. This book is the sequel to my first book, Silverlight 4 Data and Services Cookbook.

The first version did very well (it’s a five-star book on Amazon UK and Amazon.com!) so we decided that the latest version of Silverlight deserved a good book in the enterprise space as well! This is why Kevin Dockx and myself wrote a whopping 650 page book.

Should you buy the second version if you already have the first edition? Well, for starters, the new book has more than 200 extra pages, all the existing recipes have been reviewed and modified for Silverlight 5. Over 35 new recipes have been added which deeply cover MVVM, RIA Services, local data and even Windows Phone 7. And of course, all the new features that come with Silverlight 5 have been added in new recipes as well! I think it’s well worth the investment!

Here’s a complete description (actually, it’s the back cover :) ):

Microsoft Silverlight is a programmable web browser plugin that enables features including animation, vector graphics, and audio-video playback – features that characterize Rich Internet Applications. However, Silverlight is a great (and growing) Line-Of-Business platform and is increasingly being used to build data-driven business applications, both in an out of the browser. It is also the heart of Windows Phone 7 development so developers can leverage their knowledge on Microsoft’s new mobile platform as well. Services enable efficient access to your data, allowing you to draw on multiple sources of data and solve particular data problems. There is very little existing material that demonstrates how to build data-driven, enterprise-ready solutions with the platform. Silverlight 3 and 4 made a big step into Line-Of-Business data services and Silverlight 5 builds further upon this.

In this book, Gill Cleeren, Microsoft Regional Director, Silverlight MVP (former ASP.NET MVP), Telerik MVP at Ordina Belgium and Kevin Dockx, a technical specialist/project leader on .NET web applications and a solution manager for Rich Applications at RealDolmen, focus on showing .NET developers how to get their finger on the pulse of data-driven business applications in Silverlight and Windows Phone 7. What’s more, the upcoming Windows 8 will allow developers to build native, immersive Metro-style applications using XAML & C# - exactly what this book is based upon. In other words, the techniques described in this book also apply to Windows 8.

This book is not a general Silverlight 4/5 overview book; it is uniquely aimed at developers who want to build data-driven applications, based on best practices. It focuses on showing .NET developers how to interact with, and handle multiple sources of data in Silverlight business applications, and how to solve particular data problems following a practical hands-on approach, using real-world recipes. It is a practical cookbook that teaches you how to build data-rich business applications with Silverlight that draw on multiple sources of data. Most of the features covered work both in Silverlight 4 and 5. However, we cover some that are specific to Silverlight 5, which will therefore not work with Silverlight 4. Where this is the case, it is clearly indicated. Packed with reusable, real-world recipes, the book begins by introducing you to general principles when programming Silverlight. It then dives deep into the world of data and services, covering all the options available to access data and communicate with services to get the most out of data in your Silverlight business applications, whilst at the same time providing a rich user experience. This book also covers topics related to storing data locally as well as explaining how to work with data and services in a Model-View-View-Model (MVVM) architecture. Most of the content is applicable to Windows Phone 7 developers as well; a specific chapter on WP7 development is included in this release. By following the practical recipes in this book, which are of varying difficulty levels, you will learn the concepts needed to create data-rich business applications—from the creation of a Silverlight application, to displaying data in the Silverlight application and applying best practices such as MVVM. Each recipe covers a data services topic, going from the description of the problem, through a conceptual solution to a solution containing sample code.

My name is Gill Cleeren, I'm a Microsoft Regional Director and an MVP ASP.NET.
On Snowball.be, you'll find all kind news and articles on .net, ASP.NET, WPF, Silverlight
and Microsoft in general.
More on me can be found on my about page.